According to Mike Irwin's group, the membership of this galaxy in the Local
Group is still doubtful. However, Sidney van den
Bergh (2000) regards this question as positively solved and Aquarius
Dwarf a confirmed Local Group member because of a distance derivation by
Lee et.al. (1999) who derive a distance of
950 kpc (3.1 million light-years) both from our Milky Way galaxy and from
the presumable barycenter of the Local Group, from the apparent magnitudes
of giant stars at the tip of the red giant branch. Adjusted for our Hipparcos
corrected distance for the Large Magellanic Cloud this
value becomes 3.4 million light-years.